The Coming of the Third Reich (The Third Reich Trilogy Book 1)

by Richard J. Evans

It was in this cauldron of war and revolution that Nazism was forged. A mere fifteen years separated the defeat of Germany in 1918 from the advent of the Third Reich in 1933. Yet there were to be many twists and turns along the way. The triumph of Hitler was by no means inevitable in 1918, any more than it had been pre-programmed by the previous course of German history. The creation of the German Reich and its rise to economic might and Great Power status had created expectations in many people, expectations that, it was clear by this time, the Reich and its institutions were unable to fulfil. The example of Bismarck as a supposedly ruthless, tough leader who was not afraid to use violence and deception to gain his ends, was present in the minds of many, and the determination with which he had acted to curb the democratizing threat of political Catholicism and the socialist labour movement was widely admired in the Protestant middle classes. The ‘silent dictatorship’ of Hindenburg and Ludendorff had put the precepts of ruthless, authoritarian rule into practice at a moment of supreme national crisis in 1916 and created an ominous precedent for the future.